The Oatman Massacre

A Tale of Desert Captivity and Survival

Employing information from diaries, letters, and other firsthand accounts, and recent studies of 19th-century southwestern Native Americans, the author offers an updated account of the "Oatman Massacre" of 1851, in which all but three members of a Mormon pioneer family were attacked and killed by a band of Indians near the Gila River in Arizona, and in which two daughters were taken captive.